As we noted in our issue brief on the impending ICANN transition, given the vast scope of the problem, voluntary relationships between registries, registrars and private industry will be a critical aspect of controlling online piracy. Last week the MPAA and registry operator Radix announced a new “trusted notifier” program under which the MPAA will be permitted to submit evidence of large-scale piracy occurring in Radix-managed top-level domains.
In many respects, this resembles the program that the MPAA and Donuts established in February— however as the first non-U.S. based program, this is a major step forward. As in the Donuts agreement, the new program will contain a number of procedural safeguards, including a requirement that clear evidence of pervasive infringement is occurring, along with a document attesting to the fact that the MPAA first attempted to resolve the situation with the name registrar directly. If, after attempting to work with its associated registrars to contact the website owner, Radix determines that the website is engaged illegal conduct it will either place the domain name on hold or else suspend it entirely.
These sorts of self-help agreements are really crucial to the future of Internet governance, and not merely for their facilitation of removing infringing content. Once ICANN becomes an independent organization that is completely untethered from the U.S. Government, it will be up to the community at large to maintain the credibility of DNS management.
And the importance of these self-help agreements is particularly acute in light of ICANN’s long standing refusal to enforce its own contractual restrictions in place with registries and registrars. As we noted in our brief:
Very likely, [ICANN’s governance structure] will be found through voluntary, private arrangements between registries, registrars, and third parties. An overarching commitment to enforcing legitimate contracts, therefore, even ones that espouse particular policy objectives, will be a core attribute of a well-organized ICANN.
In fact, far and away ICANN’s most significant failing has been the abdication of its responsibility to enforce the terms of its own contracts, particularly the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. The effect of this obstinance is that ICANN has failed to exercise its obligation to maintain a “secure, stable, [and] resilient… Internet” free of costly “pollutants” like piracy, illegal prescription drugs, and phishing sites that impose significant costs on others with relative impunity.
In March, ICANN submitted its stewardship proposal to Congress — a document that outlines how ICANN proposes to operate as an independent organization. Much criticism of the transition has focused on the possibility of authoritarian regimes co-opting the root zone file and related DNS activities. It’s in everyone’s interest to prevent clearly illegal conduct from occurring online. Otherwise, without a minimal standard of governance, the arguments for a multi-lateral government run Internet become much easier to advance.
And certainly a big part of Congress’s consideration of the transition will be whether ICANN can plausibly continue to operate as a legitimate steward of the DNS. When registries step forward and agree to maintain at least a minimal baseline of pro-social conduct, it goes a long way toward moving the transition forward and guaranteeing a free and open Internet for the future.